Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Mary Ellen (Vallem) Sanderson was the 4th child born to Rachel (Finnestad) Vallem and Lewis Vallem. She was born April 29, 1879 in Alto township, Lee County, Illinois. Mary Ellen died May 24, 1968 in Rockford Illinois and was buried at Union Cemetery, Lee County, Illinois.

Seward Oscar Sanderson was born April 15, 1873 and died March 12, 1942.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Here is a photo* of Ole and Mari Finnestad's great granddaughter, Carshon (Richardson) Johnson, the daughter of Carrie Evelyn (Finnestad) and Charles Richardson. Carshon was the granddaughter of Caroline (Quitno) and Ole Finnestad Jr.

This photo was taken in 1962, apparently at Christmastime.
* Photo provided by Ole and Mari Finnestad's great great granddaughter, Jill (McKay) Clinton.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Here is the death certificate information for the 8th child born to Ole and Mari Finnestad, Mary (Finnestad) Bell.

After moving to the United States from Norway, Mary married someone with the last name Bell, but I've not yet been able to locate their marriage information. I do know that Mary and her husband had one child, and both the child and husband died prior to the 1900 US census.

Mary spent most of her time in Lee County, Illinois after moving to America and sometime after 1930 moved to Washington, where her brother Rasmus and his family resided.

No misspelling with Mary's father, but her mother, Mary Skaar was spelled as "Mary S Karre".

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Here is the death certificate for Ole and Mari's 5th child, Bertha (Finnestad) Haaland, the twin of Iverdine.

Bertha's married name was spelled incorrectly as Holland and her father's last name of Finnestad was misspelled as "Finnisted". They also spelled the city of Stavanger incorrectly as Staevanger, though Bertha wasn't actually born there but in a much smaller community approximately an hour northwest of Stavanger.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Locating vital records in the 1800's can be hit or miss, but the United States used to have a mortality census, so I was able to locate the 4th child (or 5th as I do not know who was born first) born to Ole and Mari Finnestad, their daughter, Iverdine (twin of Bertha).

This record lists Iverdine's name as "Dinah Travlin". Dina or Dena is short for Iverdine and this is the first I've seen of the use "Dinah". "Travlin" is spelled incorrectly; her married name was Travland.

Iverdine was born December 2, 1850 in Norway and died November 3, 1879 in Milan township, DeKalb County, Illinois. She succumbed to "the consumption" which we know today as tuberculosis.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The third child of Ole and Mari Finnestad was Maria Olsdatter who died as an infant before my great great great grandparents bought a plot at the Finnestad farm, so Maria never had the last name Finnestad.

Because she died in Norway, I do not know whether they had kept death certificates in the 1850's.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Here is the death certificate information for the second child born to Ole and Mari Finnestad, Sarah.

This is one of the rare documents I've seen where Ole and Mari's names are spelled correctly (though Mari was also spelled Mary once they arrived in America). The one error I see is that Sarah's birthday was actually July 5, 1846 and not July 8th.